


You Would Know in Words

by Black_Betty



Series: Family by Choice [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Babies, Early Mornings, Fluff, Inspired by Photography, Love Confessions, M/M, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is sent a picture that makes him see his slow-growing relationship with Charles in an entirely new light...</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Would Know in Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ikeracity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/gifts).



> This was written as a birthday present for the very lovely Ikeracity, who inspired it with a picture (if you haven't been able to tell by now, I am very susceptible to being influenced by people sending me things and shouting CHERIK IT). HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVELY! Thanks for being great :D
> 
> This takes place after "No Sooner Met" at some point in the not-so-distant future...

 

 

 

> _Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights._   
>  _But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge._   
>  _You would know in words that which you have always known in thought._   
>  _You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams._
> 
> ~ Kahlil Gibran

 

Erik wakes with the kind of cruel mindful alertness that means he's not getting back to sleep any time soon. He always does this on vacation—intends to sleep in and then wakes up at 6am before the sun is even up. He squeezes his eyes shut and waits to see if sleep will reclaim him. His mind is already whirring to life, running over all the things he needs to get done today, the laundry and the cleaning, the grass that needs to be cut. He idly scratches his toes against the back of his leg and accidently nudges Charles with his knee. When Charles grumbles with malcontent and rolls away from him to the far side of the bed, Erik decides to get up.

He peeks his head into Alex’s room on his way down the hall and smiles at the little lump still asleep under the blankets. He can hear heavy exhalations of air even from across the room and  remembers when he first brought Alex home, how still and quiet he was when he slept. How he had to place his hand on Alex’s back to reassure himself that the baby was even breathing at all. He closes the door as quietly as he can, keen to preserve the early morning peace.

His study is oppressively dark when he slips inside, tucked as it is in the back corner of the house. It's comforting though, and he leaves the lights off, lets his computer screen flood the room with a dim flourescent light. He settles down in his desk chair as the computer pulls itself out of sleepmode and and once it's ready, begrudingly begins clearing out the emails he’s been avoiding for the past two days.

There’s something from his mother that catches his eye, subject heading adorably abstract as always.  _FUN IN SUN_  it says, along with something that might be an emoticon. He thinks maybe he should have considered the ramifications of showing his mother the internet and releasing her on the unsuspecting public, but he doesn’t. Especially not when she sends him emails like this, full of strange chat-lingo that he’s not sure anyone actually uses, and a barrage of grumpy cat pictures under the heading ERIK HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? IT’S YOU AS A CAT! LOL DGTG

At the bottom, however, is a fairly rational message that says,

_Miss you honey—hope you’re well. Call me sometime, okay? I’ve attached some pictures from the BBQ in July, I thought you’d like them. Kisses to all my beautiful boys—especially Charles! You don’t kiss him nearly enough, believe me!!_

_xoxox Mama_

He laughs and clicks the jpeg attachment at the bottom of the email. His mother loves Charles, nearly as much as she loves Alex. Maybe more than she loves Erik, or at least that’s what he tells her when he’s feeling neglected. Charles always acts bashful, but Erik knows he loves it when Edie pats his cheek and forces him eat more potato salad, makes him dance with her to strange 1970s disco music, or calls him her “Little Paul McCartney.”

The pictures are from a birthday party his mother held for her neighbour Sophia earlier in the summer. In typical Edie Lensherr fashion she had invited nearly everyone she knew, despite the fact that Sophia was a reclusive 87-year-old Italian woman who knew absolutely no one. His mother is like that, opening her house to anyone and everyone, despite how many times and how badly she’s been burned for it in the past.

A bunch of their friends had been at the party. There’s a picture of Raven smashing cake into Azazel’s face, and then licking it off in the next picture as Sean cheers and Ororo wryly wipes buttercream off her shoulder, her dress collateral damage. Hank McCoy is hiding in the background of one shot, painfully awkward and shy, newly blue, and Erik remembers how Charles had talked him into coming, had gone to his house to pick him up, and stuck by him for the majority of the party, keeping him occupied with genetics talk that bored Erik out of his skull.

There’s a picture of Logan and Jean in the pool, perfect and glistening wet, and another of Jean trying to dunk Logan in the water, laughing manically. He smiles despite himself (he really dislikes Logan, for reasons he can’t even put his finger on), and clicks through to the next picture. This one is of Charles and Alex, and it makes him pause, his hand frozen on the mouse.

Erik looks at the picture for a long time. Charles’ hair is cut shorter than it is now, his facial hair longer in the way he wears it when he doesn’t have class and allows himself to be lazy. He is smiling at someone off camera broad and open in a way that Erik is happily becoming more familiar with. Alex is settled into the crook of his elbow, the baby’s hand clutched into the material of Charles’ shirt, and they look… comfortable with each other. There’s an easy intimacy in their embrace that speaks of a lot of time spent wrapped up in each other’s arms. It makes Erik think about Charles when he first met Alex, how tentative he was, how afraid he was of hurting someone so small, so vulnerable. How, secretly, Charles was afraid of  _being_  hurt.  The Charles in the picture is open in a way Erik hadn’t even realized was possible, and looking at him, he feels an unnamable emotion swell up and clench painfully in his throat.

He gets up from the office chair in a sudden lurch and heads back to the bedroom. Alex’s room is still quiet when he pauses by the door, the entire house held still and silent in the early morning hush. He continues down the hall and stands in the doorway to the room where Charles is still sleep.

Charles doesn’t stay over as much as they’d both like. Usually their school and work schedules don’t mesh quite right, and beyond that the relationship is complicated enough that they both feel awkward about boundaries with the baby, and with each other. Recently, Erik’s been trying to think of a way to ask Charles to stay more often. He’s getting tired of waking up alone, of only having snatched moments with Charles at night, or during a brief break for food during their busy workdays.

They've both been on vacation for the past couple days, and already Erik's grown accoustomed to Charles remaining in his bed at night, wandering sleepily through the house in the morning. So far the late summer nights of wine and card games,marathons of bad television and sleepy, languorous sex have felt strangely comfortable and domestic. Looking at Charles, asleep and curled under the familiar quilt his mother found for him at a yard sale when he was a kid, something about it seems unquestionably _right_.

He’s turned away on his side, his worn threadbare undershirt stretched tight across broad shoulders and twisted from the way he squirms in his sleep. His hair is dark and tangled against the pillow and his hands are tucked up beneath his head, making him look strangely vulnerable and young.

Erik crawls onto the bed carefully, trying not to jostle him awake, and takes a moment propped on his elbow to admire the way the early morning sun catches his freckles, denser and darker than normal from their trip to the beach two days previous, the way his mouth is parted slightly and wet, his eyelashes dark across his cheeks fluttering with dreams, the way he is ridiculously, unfairly beautiful even in sleep.

That wave of emotion Erik felt in the dimly lit office rises up again and he lies down, folds himself around Charles who is still heavy with sleep, breathes him in and wraps him up in his arms. He can feel the brief flicker of fuzzy emotion that signals Charles’ slow return to the waking world, warmly familiar in the surface of Erik’s mind. Charles mutters something intelligible and clears his throat, shifts himself more comfortably into Erik’s embrace. Erik squeezes him tight and says,

“I love you.”

Charles must be partially awake, because his entire body goes rigid. Erik holds him a little tighter and refuses to let go. The tense feeling that had been choking him, that had sat lodged in his throat like a fistful of excited tears, has dissipated with the words. He’s sure of them. He doesn’t want to take them back. They sit in his mouth with the sweet, relieving taste of truth.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says into the smooth skin of Charles’ nape where the hair curls slightly, “I don’t expect you to…I just wanted you to know.”

Slowly he can feel Charles’ body relaxing, one muscle at a time. Charles reaches up and grasps the hand Erik has on his chest, tangles their fingers together.

He doesn’t say anything, and after a while Erik wonders if he’s fallen back asleep. He rolls them over slightly, just enough to press his entire body against Charles and kiss him on the cheek where his skin is rough with ginger beard.

Charles’ eyes are open and he’s staring down at their entwined hands, and he licks his lips once, and then again, the way he does when he’s thinking about what he’s going to say. Before he can form words, there is a soft murmur from the next room, and then a rising wail.

They pause a moment and then both sigh, nearly simultaneously.

“Baby’s awake,” Erik says, and unravels himself from Charles’ body, tries not to be disappointed. He told Charles he didn’t have to say anything and he meant it. He’s not here to pressure Charles into anything. Charles has had enough of that in his life, and Erik wants this house and their relationship to be a safe place.

Still, when he goes into Alex’s room and sees him standing in the crib reaching out for him with fat grasping hands, he can’t help but scoop him up and squeeze him a little tighter than usual.

Alex hiccups and sags sleepily in Erik’s arms, rubs his wet face against the bare skin of Erik’s throat and Erik shushes him gently, rocks him back and forth and presses his cheek against his hair.

He can hear Charles in the hallway, the creak of floorboards giving him away. He pauses for a long time, so long Erik thinks that maybe he imagined him there, until suddenly his rough hands are sliding around Erik's waist, Chalres' breath hot against the bare skin of his back as he presses his forehead against Erik’s shoulder.

“I do…too,” he mumbles, his voice surprisingly loud in the silence of the nursery.

Erik shakes his head,

“Charles, you don’t—“ but Charles clutches him a little tighter.

“I can’t say it,” he says, his slowly his body relaxes in the curve of Erik’s spine, warm and graceful and a perfect fit, “I can’t—I—“ he huffs out a breath and fits his chin over Erik’s shoulder, reaches up with one hand to covers Erik’s where it is slowly rubbing circles over Alex’s back,

“but I do. I do.”

Erik thinks about Charles in the picture, holding Alex so easily, so naturally, as though Alex was an extension of himself. Standing in Erik’s Mother’s backyard is if he has always been there. He thinks about Charles in his bed, and Charles tucking his cold feet under Erik’s thigh during the movie the night before, and the way that Charles smiles at him, really smiles at him and Alex like he doesn’t smile at anyone else. In a way that can’t be captured in a photograph.

He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t breathe.

He says, “I know.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
